{"id":18760,"date":"2019-08-07T14:34:25","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T14:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/?p=18760"},"modified":"2025-12-04T10:36:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T10:36:56","slug":"after-the-formalities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/2019\/08\/after-the-formalities\/","title":{"rendered":"After the Formalities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The threat of violence is never far away in Anthony Anaxagorou&#8217;s breakthrough collection <em>After the Formalities<\/em>. Technically achieved, emotionally transformative and razor-sharp,<br \/>\nthese are poems that confront and contradict; poems in which the scholarly synthesises with the streetwise, and global histories are told through the lens of one family.<\/p>\n<p>Anaxagorou \u2018speaks against the darkness\u2019, tracking the male body under pressure from political and historical forces, and celebrates the precarious joy of parenthood. The title poem is a meditation on racism and race science that draws on the poet&#8217;s Cypriot heritage and is as uncomfortable as it is virtuosic. Elsewhere, in a sequence of prose poems that shimmer with lyric grace, he writes, \u2018I&#8217;m your father &amp; the only person keeping you alive.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"position: relative; width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/363703539?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" frameborder=\"0\"><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The threat of violence is never far away in Anthony Anaxagorou&#8217;s breakthrough collection After the Formalities. Technically achieved, emotionally transformative and razor-sharp, these are poems that confront and contradict; poems in which the scholarly synthesises with the streetwise, and global histories are told through the lens of one family. Anaxagorou \u2018speaks against the darkness\u2019, tracking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[296,173,4,29,233],"tags":[149,121,99,196,97,115,163,125,93,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18760"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18851,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18760\/revisions\/18851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}